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Rites of Passage/Transcript
WORK IN PROGRESS; NEEDS HUMAN REVIEW You know, a lot of the high-end cars have a navigational system built right into the dash. I guess men find it easier to ask their car for directions than a total stranger. But the problem with high- tech is the high price. So I'm going low-tech and low-brow. See, at my age, I'm not interested in going anywhere I've never been before. So on my last few trips, I took along this cassette recorder and recorded the directions myself. Now all I do is pop in the tape of wherever I want to go and presto, instant directions. And technically, it's not asking for help 'cause it's still me. Like right now, I've got to go to the post office so all I've got to do is get out the post office cassette. Beer store, other beer store, other other beer -- here we are... Post office. [ engine revs ] recorded voice: Okay, I get to the end of the driveway and hang a left. And now I'm coming up to a red mailbox. Oh, wait, no, that was the road back there. I'd better pull a u-ey. [ tires squealing ] okay, watch out for that road sign. [ laughter and applause ] [ cheering and applause ] all right. Thank you very much. I appreciate it. A bit of a setback up at the lodge this week. Junior singleton tried out his one-man water skiing invention where he skis behind an unmanned boat with the rope tied to the throttle of the outboard motor. But you know, no matter how clever an idea is, things can go wrong. As it turns out, junior's a lot better at water skiing than he is at tying knots. Uncle red, oh boy. The farnsworth's are going to keep junior's boat. Oh, she ran aground at the farnsworth's... Yeah, yeah, during their daughter's beachfront wedding reception. Oh boy. Yeah, junior's unmanned boat came right off the dock, flattened the no trespassing sign, landed right in the buffet. Oh boy. The prop pureed an entire side of pork. Wow and now they're being jerks about it? I know, it's hard to believe. You know, some people... But you know, they say it landed on their property so they're keeping it now. And mr. Farnsworth, he's a very successful lawyer. Well he can't be that successful if he has a place up here. You know what, maybe a bunch of us should go over and see this hotshot lawyer and drop a torte in his briefs. No, no, no, no. Violence is not the answer. It's fun, though. No, it's not. No, no, no. Violence only leads to more violence. Instead, we should present our legal position. Oh yeah, I know. We sue them and they sue us and it goes back and forth between the lawyers at 300 bucks an hour and it comes to court about nine years later. We win of course but then they have an appeal and by the time the thing's settled and we get the boat back, we're all in an old age home and nobody has the strength to pull-start anything. No, all we have to say to the town council is that the farnsworth's do not own that beach. Nobody does! It's called riparian rights. Yeah, that boat is not on their property. And you think they're going to side with us rather than farnsworth who pays taxes? Uncle red, all we have to do is go around the lake and get our neighbours to sign this petition. The town council cannot argue with that. That's pretty smart. Yeah, it's very smart. It's way better than violence. Yeah and if somebody won't sign it, I'll just smack 'em one. [ applause ] it's time for the possum lodge word game! Today's winner receives this coupon for a bucket of chicken from the port asbestos high volume chicken ranch where chickens don't cross the road because we breed them not to have any bones. All right, cover your ears, mike. Red, you've got 30 seconds to get mike hammer to say this word. Yeah, all right winston. And go! Okay, mike, when you work, this is what you make. License plates. Okay, this is another term for the bottom line. Oh, bikini wax. No, okay. This is something that every ceo is focussed on... Net? Stockings. Do you even know what ceo means? How do you spell it? Okay, let's try something else. This is a mysterious person who knows where you'll be in the future. Oh, the judge. Red, you guys are almost out of time, here. Okay, okay. Mike, say you buy something for 90 bucks and then sell it for 100 bucks. That difference of 10 dollars is? Peanuts. I can acquire the same object for nothing and then sell it to a fence for 50 bucks. Okay and that gives you a? Court appearance. The problem with that is after I've paid the lawyer and I rent the suit, there goes my profit. There we go! [ ringing bell ] [ cheers and applause ] well tonight, local animal control officer, ed frid is going to tell us how he likes to unwind after dealing with animals all day long. Ed? Well, I like to have a couple of pops and get out a few animal traps. That's my hobby. Kind of a strange hobby, it's a lot like your job. I mean a hobby is supposed to help you take a break. Take a break? Harold, do you think grizzly bears take a break? Huh? Do you think rattlesnakes have a social club where they go to drink tea and play cards? Oh no, no, no, no. Snakes can't shuffle. They can't shuffle, they're snakes. They can't shuffle. So... What is it about animal traps that appeals to you, ed? You know, is it that you feel trapped by your job? I'd rather not say. Oh, okay, well maybe you can tell us about this one I see your trap is open. You should talk. Okay, uh... This is a leg trap. It's a colin & bronton 1937 paw master 75. Wow, it looks dangerous. Should you be handling it like that if it is dangerous? Oh, well yeah, very much so, oh yeah. But this one is rusted open. Yeah, urine will do that. How do you know urine did it? I'd rather not say. Now here's a very important trap. We use this for catching the cleverest animal known to man, the raccoon. That's a cat. It looks like a cat. Like I say, raccoons are clever. Now, for a commercial fisherman, there are lobster traps and this one, this is one used right here on possum lake. I thought that lobsters were saltwater crustaceans. Yeah but around here, a fisherman can make a pretty good living pulling up snowmobile gloves. Okay. Now, say you want to catch a mouse. Oh, that'd great because then we could feed it to this raccoon. Okay. This is the best. This is the rat master 500 and its got a couple... Auugh! Owww! Not again! Not again! You know, a lot of people don't care for accordion music. They make jokes about it like, the difference between an accordion and a trampoline is you take your shoes off and jump on a trampoline. Or the definition of an optimist is an accordion player with a pager. Or, if you play one more note on that thing you're going to need a surgeon to remove it from your large intestine. Now, I don't know anything about music but I do have an opinion. It seems that if something isn't good, alls they do is make it real loud. Like rap music or opera or the laugh track on who's the boss. So I'm going to make my accordion really loud with a few simple components: A vinyl folding door, some parts from this old toilet and a late model minivan with a power sliding door and a sunroof. Oh yeah, and of course, a stool. I really lucked out on this minivan. The salesman said try it for the weekend so I am. Alls I'm doing is I'm taking the accordion air pump and putting it on steroids. I've magnified the bellows by mounting the folding door inside the slider opening. And this is a power unit so I don't have to do any work which is music to my ears. Now if you've seen the inside of an accordion, I hope you've apologized to the owner and you also know that there's a valve on the back that lets the air in when the bellows are opened up. So I got this toilet flapper valve mounted over the hole in the floor and connected by this chain to the toilet handle. So now, every time the door slides open, it automatically flushes the toilet and lets the new air in. Okay, I've made the van completely air tight using the handyman's secret weapon and I mounted the business side of the accordion over the sunroof so that all the air will pass through it. Now, I had to rewire the remote a little bit so that the side door would open and close without stopping. It's a lot easier than I thought. I just put it in the microwave for a few minutes. And now, if you'll excuse me, it's showtime! [ accordion music playing ] [ bad accordion sounds ] [ cheers and applause ] the other day I was thinking back to when I was a teenager as a way of getting ready for my second childhood. We had an expression back then... Whenever you went on a date, your friends always wanted to know if you got lucky. You know... Well, you know. I mean that was big. Any guy that could get lucky must be really something. We had one guy, brett, he never played baseball but he got a lot of home runs if you know what I mean, most of them inside the park. Well, I ran into brett a couple of weeks ago and I would say that his luck has kind of run out. It's tough to be a playboy when you don't have the magazine or the mansion. He has the fancy scarf, though, you know, the ascot. In fact, he's had it caught many times. So there he is, sitting at the bar with a dyed moustache and a bad toupee trying to pick up flight attendants but all the gates are closed and the seatbelts are securely fastened. Meanwhile, bernice and I are in the restaurant having a ribeye steak and a baked potato and when dinner's over, I know where she'll be spending the night. I can't give you any more information about what's going to happen after that because after all these years, I still don't have a clue. But the point is, for all you guys who struck out as teenagers like I did, take a look at your life now. Funny how much good fortune can come from not getting lucky. Remember, I'm pulling for you. We're all in this together. [ cheers and applause ] if you're watching what you eat while you're sitting at the kitchen table, that's fine. But if you're watching what you ate while you're looking out the backyard window, call me. Well, we had no luck getting any of our neighbours to sign the petition and some of them can read and write. But nobody wanted to question the ownership of farnsworth's beach because that would lead to questioning the ownership of their own waterfront. It's like being a turkey at thanksgiving. You've got a whole different attitude when you've got something to lose. Speaking of turkeys... You know, the cottages on this lake, they've got a thing of two to learn about diplomacy. One of them told me where I could stick my petition then tried to put it there. Don't you worry about that, harold. I have a little something called plan "b". Oh no... It's not violent is it? Not yet. No, we're going to walk all the way around possum lake with a whole whack of these signs. We're going to stick them in front of everybody's property to let them know the beach doesn't belong to them... Especially farnsworth. Our slogan is, let's get the sign of a beach. That's a very civilized way to get your message across. Do you think farnsworth is going to give junior's boat back? Oh, I think so, yeah. Really? Yeah, a big, important lawyer like that, you think he's going to be intimidated by a bunch of old guys walking around with signs? Oh, no, harold, we're not going to be walking. It's too far to be walking around possum lake. [ cheers and applause ] it was raining outside and bill came in and he was ready for a supernatural adventure with some investigations into bad luck and superstition. First of all, you never open an umbrella indoors. So put that away and there's your first sign -- first sign things are not going well. And now you've -- bill, you're under a ladder. You're actually, okay there comes the bat. Okay bill, get rid of the umbrella. Get rid of the umbrella. Get calm, get calm. Now look for something to -- there we go. There we go. And... Okay. Okay, now, bill, stay calm, stay calm. Bill, bill, c'mon now bill. Okay, take it easy. Take it easy. Take it easy. Easy now. You're not doing that well with the bat. Okay, it's about love-200 by now. All right, you know what, let's just -- you know what I say, let's get rid of the tennis racket. Get rid of it. Get rid of it. There we go. Okay now, plan b, maybe the bat's gone that could be. Oh he's going to get a pillowcase. Oh, this is more humane. Get the pillowcase. Oh, it's old man sedgewick's teeth. He puts them all there hoping for the tooth fairy. And, okay, the bat has landed right on top of the little dresser there and bill is going to just scoop him up and just scoop him up there bill... Shhh. Go! Go! Go now! Go! There he got him. Easy now, easy, easy, easy, easy. Holy cow! Take it easy, take it easy. Bill! Bill he's only a little bat. Bill! Bill! There's the bat. What's in the bag? Oh, it's the clock. Okay, so... All right, the bat's still there and unfortunately bill has another plan. So he grabs a firearm -- oh, that's not an indoor toy, bill. Oh, easy, easy. Bill, the aim. Bill, the aim, bill. Bill, oh my gosh, that's an heirloom. Okay, thank goodness he's out of ammo. No, no, no, no, no, no. Okay, he's just going to try and just -- you're not going to grab the bat are you? Bill, the bat's probably going to defend himself. Bill, no bill. No, no, no, no! Oh, oh, oh... Bill, then a strange thing starts to happen. Bill seems to change and starts getting ideas. He gets the umbrella out and I don't know what he's got in mind here. He starts cutting the umbrella up. What are you doing, bill? What are you doing? Oh, wings. Oh boy, okay. All right, this is getting into kind of a fantasy world. Boy, that's an odd look isn't it? Oh, there he is. Wow, he's looking good. He kind of looks like john travolta. And he's whipping around, he's eating mosquitoes like crazy, lots of mosquitoes and then... It was all a strange dream but he's still got mosquitoes in his teeth he can't figure out. Oh, those aren't mosquitoes, they're mesquite wings. Oh... [ cheers and applause ] got kind of a two-part lesson for all of you handymen out there. Last spring I had to re-seed the lawn out where the lodge members park all of their cars. The grass was all killed from the various fluids leaking out all over the ground. Some of it from the vehicles. Now, this job needed a lot of grass seed because we're talking about a pretty big lawn. The problem is we're trying to do this on a budget but it's too big a job for one guy especially if that guy is me. Then I thought, hey, I don't shovel snow, why should I shovel grass seed? Okay, that's the first part of today's lesson. Be creative. The second part, always clean up your tools. [ laughter ] mission accomplished... Sort of... Well I see you're back from the front. Actually, I can almost see your front from the back. You know what friendly fire is harold? Yes, I'm sorry, okay. How did things go? Things went well? Well we made it most of the way around the lake but in a way we realized how many of the residents had incorporated the beachfront into their landscaping. We're talking hedges? Hedges, barbed wire, electric fences, stone walls, gazebos, bunkhouses, doghouses, we took a lot of hits. I believe it's called flak. Well, you would know. But we made our point, harold. We got junior's boat back. All right, okay! That's great! Where is it? Under the tank. [ possum squeals ] meeting time. Yeah. Time for the de-briefing. Why don't we start with yours? Okay, all right, okay. Okay, if my wife is watching I'll be coming straight home after the meeting and I learned an important lesson this week. Things that I have belong to me and things that you have belong to you but it's way more fun when we share. And to the rest of you, thanks for watching. On behalf of myself and harold and the whole gang up here at possum lodge, keep your stick on the ice. [ cheers and applause ] c'mon hurry up and sit down. Sit down there. All rise. Quando omni flunkus moritati. Sit down. Bow your heads for the man's prayer. I'm a man but I can change if I have to I guess. All right men, apparently the beachfront doesn't belong to anybody which limits the liability of all the land owners including the lodge. So from now on whenever you see something that looks like it's going to blow up, take her down to the dock.